St. Louis: School shooting leaves three dead, including gunman – National & International News – MON 24Oct2022

St. Louis: School shooting leaves 3 dead, including gunman. Court temporarily blocks Biden’s student debt relief after GOP challenge. Rishi Sunak named new British PM.

NATIONAL NEWS

St. Louis: School shooting leaves three dead, including gunman

Around 9am local time this morning, a male who appeared to be about 20 years old entered the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, MO. Carrying what witnesses described as a long gun, he killed a teenaged girl at the scene and also shot an adult woman who died in hospital. School security had apparently observed the gunman’s efforts to enter the school and summoned police.

From the moment teachers were alerted to the gunman’s presence, classrooms went into “drill mode”- lights off, doors locked, students and teachers huddled in classroom corners where they wouldn’t be seen. Math teacher David Williams says the gunman attempted to enter his locked classroom. Williams heard a man’s voice shout. “You are all going to f**king die”. The gunman was unable to enter the classroom, but Williams heard several more shots, which he said sounded like a semi-automatic weapon. Shortly thereafter, a group of officers quickly arrived and engaged the shooter, killing him. The whole ordeal lasted about 40 minutes.

St. Louis police have not yet identified the shooter, nor his victims.

Around the same time in Michigan, 16-year-old Ethan Crumbley was pleading guilty to charges stemming from a shooting he carried out at his school last year. Crumbley killed four people, all his fellow students, with a gun his father had bought for him as a Christmas present only days before.

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Court temporarily blocks Biden’s student debt relief after GOP challenge

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, MO, has put a temporary hold on President Biden’s efforts to forgive billions of dollars in student debt. The order that Biden issued a few weeks ago forgives $10,000 in student debt to borrowers making under $125,000 per year. Recipients of Pell Grants, issued to low-income borrowers, would have $20,000 in student debt wiped clean.

Biden’s order fulfilled a campaign promise and increased his poll numbers significantly. Republican groups immediately began filing case after case in an effort to block the relief. Most of the cases were rejected for lack of standing since plaintiffs could not demonstrate harm. Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett turned away such a case just last week.

On Friday, the 8th Circuit issued a temporary stay pending a review of a challenge brought by Attorneys General in 6 GOP-led states, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina. A lower court had again ruled that the 6 states had not established standing.

The 6 states argued that loan servicing companies in their states would be harmed by the loan forgiveness. Although the companies would be fully reimbursed for the loans by the federal government, the loan companies would be deprived of the added interest and service fees that borrowers would have to pay if the term of their loans dragged out longer. The servicing companies themselves have not filed any challenges to the law.

Over 22 million people have already applied for loan forgiveness. The Department of Education are urging student borrowers to continue applying so their claims will be processed more quickly when the stay is lifted, as seems likely. The problem now is whether that will happen before the Jan. 1 deadline to begin repayments. Biden has said the extension to Jan. 1 would be the last.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Rishi Sunak named new British PM

Last week, Liz Truss stepped down from her brief but troubled tenure as British Prime Minister. Her 45-day stint in office is the shortest ever premiership in Britain’s long history. In a few short weeks, Truss managed to tank the markets and crash the pound with an unrealistic budget plan. Even though she did a quick U-turn, the damage was done and her MPs called for her resignation.

Assuming office today is Rishi Sunak, former Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) under Truss’ predecessor Boris Johnson. Embarrassingly, Sunak had warned that Truss’ economic policy would be disastrous. Once this prediction came through, Truss fired her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and installed Jeremy Hunt in his place. Hunt immediately announced his intent to implement a plan previously endorsed by… Rishi Sunak.

The Conservatives announced Sunak’s ascension today after he managed to gain enough support in the party. Astoundingly, Boris Johnson was also in the running to retake the seat from which he resigned in disgrace less than 7 weeks ago. Johnson claimed to have the requisite number of parliamentarians (100) supporting him, though there’s some doubt as to whether that’s actually true. But we will never know because just this morning, Johnson announced he was withdrawing his candidacy. Although Johnson insisted he had adequate support, he said he’d decided that running again wasn’t “the right thing to do”.

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